The Stain of Silence: Nazi Ethics and Bioethics

Abstract

There is little agreement among scholars of the history of bioethics about where bioethics begins. It is understood that medical ethics long predates bioethics, but medical ethics, whether of the early Greek physicians or of the nineteenth-century physicians and surgeons of Britain and the United States, consists of a code or pro fessional conduct for doctors. Bioethics is far more than that. It is the study of ethical problems in the practice of medicine involving doctors, nurses, other health care pro- fessionals, managers, payers, patients, and researchers. Bioethics’ scope ranges beyond clinical medicine to include moral problems in the life sciences, research, and health economics. More to the point, bioethics involves multidisciplinary reflections on eth- ical problems, not simply the wisdom of the medical profession about how best to practice.